About the Rainforest Curriculum Guide

This curriculum guide is filled with resources to help coordinate a unit about the rainforests. This guide provides non-fiction and fiction picture books, website links, poems about the rainforests, and a chapter books that would be a great classroom read aloud for your Rainforest unit. This curriculum resource guide will be useful for teachers in grades 3-6 because it takes concepts that have been tought in previous grades and builds on the children's knowledge and understanding of their environment. This guide is simple and easy to refer to and will help link you to many resources that can be used when teaching a unit on the Rainforest!

Website Links

SC ETV Streamline

• This website is full of video, video segments, images, and quizzes on the rainforest. This website will be helpful when you are trying to give the students a first-hand look at what the rainforest looks like and the animals that can be seen within it.
• http://search.discoveryeducation.com/
• Type in the search box: Rainforest
• This will then take you to the website and it's Rainforest resources

An Index of Rainforest Websites for Children

• This website links you to many different websites about Rainforests, and groups that are established to protect the Rainforests. It also has websites linked for teachers that will help develop your Rainforest unit.
• http://www.rain-tree.com/links.htm

Rainforest Chapter Book

Jaguar by: Roland Smith

• This book is the story of a young boy named Jake who goes to visit his father in Brazil. Jake's dad is a doctor who is working in Brazil on a jaguar preserve and this leads Jake and his Dad into the heart of the rainforest and on the hunt to find out who is trying to sabotage the jaguar preserve. This book is great for children in 3rd-6th grades and will keep you on the edge of your seat throughout the entire book. A great classroom read aloud!

Rainforest Poems

Treasure of the Rainforest

R is for the rain that trickles down my face

A is for the anaconda that slithers round the branches of a tree

I is for the insects that run about the vines

N is for the noises that enchant everyone that listens

F is for the frog that jumps in the swamp

O is for the orange claw of the fiddler crab

R is for the red plant that smells of rotten meat

E is for everyone that watches silent and still

S is for the storm that floods all the trees

T is for the treasure of all rainforests.

In the Rainforest

In the middle of the rainforest

Trees are reaching up so tall

In the middle of the rainforest

I feel so small

In the middle of the rainforest

I am the only person there

In the middle of the rainforest

All the animals screech and stare

In the middle of the rainforest

Vines hang straggled, long

In the middle of the rainforest

Animals sing their rainforest song.

What We Saw in the Rainforest

A flying lizard on a rock, still as a stone

Huge buttress roots like monsters' claws

Curling vines, tight around trees like miniature flumes

A tarantula scuttling – demented

Bush babies, little balls of fur with huge watchful eyes

Snakes slithering slowly, softly, gracefully up trees.

Then a tropical thunderstorm came

–Ptchoum! Pattering rain.Kabourm!

– the lightening came

And we were scared

And could feel the water

trickling

down

our skin.